This is footling: an essay/gripe about how sad the lead character in High Fidelity is, which promptly confuses fiction with reality and decides that a recognisable and amusing caricature of the collectormentality must actually stand for what all record collectors are like in real life. Nope: it is, amazingly, possible to attune oneself both to the ‘inauthentic’ emotion of a pop song and the ‘authentic’ emotion of, I don’t know what this guy thinks is authentic, a dinner party or a snog or something. And what makes the former emotion more ‘sad’, anyhow – the fact that you experience it alone? Or with friends rather than lovers?
Mind you, I’m still not going to show this link to my girlfriend.